Trip 40 — Niue and Dogojima Walks

Dogojima day 2: Okinoshima to Uzuki
Wednesday, 6 March 2024

Yesterday: 19351 steps/15.86 km/9.85 mi/2h 33m
Total: 21226 steps/17.38 km/10.80 mi/2h 50m

I was awake before 6:30, but I would have been roused anyway by a kind of musical alarm that went off around the Hotel Miyabi at that time. The promised rain had been moved a couple of hours earlier, so there would be little chance of a dry start.

At breakfast, it was bacon and an egg on the burner where I'd cooked my Oki beef the night before. The burner, of course, was fueled just enough to cook the food, and then it extinguished itself. Accompaniments included seaweed, miso soup, grilled salmon, beans, and what looked like a side salad from a diner — basic lettuce, cucumber, and tomato, with a sweet dressing.

I finished and looked outside. Still dry, still hope. I walked upstairs to my room as the first drops were hitting the window.

There was no point in waiting it out; it was only going to get worse and windier. But at least the rain wasn't heavy. I proceeded around Saigo Bay, past a lumberyard and the Oki Fisheries High School, approaching the hills that poked out beyond the bay, green Hershey's Kisses tickling the clouds.

Then I started to climb, past giant sloping rock-retaining walls. When the road curved sharply — and it would dozens of times along the eastern coast — the road narrowed, and then it became wider through the brief straightaways. A pink public bus passed me; it makes four round trips each day.

The sweet smell of pine, and the occasional bird. There was very little traffic, a car every few minutes. I thought it would be polite to wave to the drivers as I had on Niue, but when I did the same here, the driver stopped and backed up, to see whether I needed anything.

"Daijoubu desu," I said. Everything's OK.

I hadn't thought about bringing water for the short journey, and there were no convenience stores up from the Hotel Miyabi. But at the top of a hill, electricity and modern convenience out of place beside this winding mountain road, there was a fully stocked and operational vending machine. Dogojima had me covered.

An hour into the journey I reached the Sasaki-ke Traditional Residence, a former village head's home built in 1836 and probably Okinoshima's oldest extant house. Of note were the three entrances, used for different purposes and guests and typical of the style; the window pulleys, which the caretaker demonstrated; the hanging kettle above the fire amid the tatami mats in the dining area; and the cedar-bark roof weighted down by bamboo logs and more than 600 stones.

Near the fishing village of Oku, a giant slab rose from the water, exposed on one side and covered in vegetation on the other. This was Tsunomejima, and behind it was its little sibling, Okitsunomejima. In front, barely an island, resting on the manmade wall at the shore, was Inujima or Dog Island — it once had a canine appearance but its soft makeup and years of winds have necessitated a broad imagination to see the resemblance.

I climbed again and soon reached a short tunnel. I've dealt with surprisingly few of these in the Abecedarian Walks, the most memorable being a busy highway tunnel with barely a walking shoulder on Tenerife. There was no walking space here either, but there was no traffic. The experience was still eerie, the small opening through the giant mountain magnifying my relative insignificance in nature. It helped that the tunnel was short and straight enough for me to see the exit before I entered. And it was nice to have a respite from the rain, if only for a minute.

Back down along the Kuboro Coast, I reached a beach. The Oki Islands have a rich geological makeup and history, which I can only begin to appreciate after reading Toru Tomita's book, and every information board refers to it. Here the specialty was xenoliths — rocks encased in other rocks — containing colorful minerals such as olivine and pyroxene. The Sea of Japan area is notable for having a thin crust, and volcanic activity spewed up all these lovely hues from the earth's mantle not far below. Farther along, I reached the viewpoint for Kuroshima Island, whose columnar joints in circular formation, along with the presence of mantle xenoliths like those at the beach, indicate that what looked to be a straight fin rising from the sea was actually a volcanic crater.

> From Kuroshima I went up one more time, a long, straight incline and through a short tunnel. If the rain had one benefit, it was hustling me along; every kilometer to this point had taken under ten minutes. I worried that I might break the streak along this uphill stretch, but I overcompensated, and kilometer 13 of the day was under nine minutes. Then somehow I got complacent, and Helga — MapMyWalk has not changed the voice since Jeju — announced my completion of kilometer 14 in ten minutes and eight seconds. I was crestfallen. Still, my average for the day was nine minutes and 39 seconds, probably my fastest daily average in all the Abecedarian Walks.

Dogojima doesn't get many visitors from outside Japan. Finding places to stay meant navigating colorful Web sites with inviting pictures of lovely dinners, hoping Google's translation feature worked properly and wouldn't book me into a dormitory with 20 other people and a meal plan featuring extra mayonnaise and natto (stringy fermented soybeans, perhaps the only other thing I won't eat). In the end I usually got to a page telling me that March was way too early in the year to be visiting the Oki Islands and the place wouldn't be open until things warmed up. I was only moderately sure I had properly reserved the Miyabi.

I can't find it anymore, but until a couple of months ago the Okinoshima Town Tourism Association's site had a form where one could request a specific lodging for specific dates. When I saw one of the places was called the Geo Resort Symphony and it was along my route, I had to make the request to stay there, among others.

I submitted the form in December, and someone kindly messaged me back saying they weren't thinking about the new year yet. I resubmitted in January and the person at the other end, after some consultation, made just enough of a connection to tell me that the Geo Resort Symphony didn't normally take one person for one night in March, but they were open to it, and I should message them through their Instagram profile. (Then, apparently, the tourism site had had enough of my requests and got rid of the form entirely.)

The Symphony and I moved the conversation over to e-mail, and eventually I added another night, because I was having trouble finding a place between the there and the Hotel Uneri in the northwest. I reached the Symphony at noon and, seeing no cars, I wasn't sure whether the owners were there yet. I also wasn't sure which building I should report to; there was a hotel up the hill with a different name, and there was a building down the hill that advertised a diving center. Neither was open, and it was freezing.

I messaged the owners that I had arrived in Uzuki village but would head to the only restaurant in the area, 20 minutes further up the road, through three long tunnels of 405, 410, and 178 meters each, almost a whole kilometer in total. The road authority couldn't have made it easier — there was a broad walkway, and the tunnels were reasonably lit, with aid phones every minute or so — but it was still a creepy place, with only one car coming by; I felt like I was walking to another world, another dimension, and might not find humanity as I knew it when I emerged.

My fingers were so cold upon reaching the Porest restaurant that, after using the bathroom, I couldn't button my pants. My thumbs wouldn't move. I was able to get the belt buckled, though, and I sat down for hearty breaded pork (tonkatsu) with rice and miso soup. Then, because Wednesdays are Porest's day off, I picked up a tin of fish at the grocery store for today's lunch and threaded the tunnels again.

Mr. Matsuyama (he said I could call him "G.M." for "general manager") met me in front of the upper building...in his car. He wanted to drive me around the property to point out the dining room (poetically called Cafe La Mer) and then my cottage. After a beat, I got in. It was raining and he had opened the place up for me in the winter — I wasn't going to insist that he walk me around. Besides, he had a Chopin polonaise playing in the car, played by his preferred pianist, Ingrid Fuzjko Hemming.

(The music theme abounded. Cafe La Mer was named for the Debussy piece, and one of the owners' daughters plays the trumpet in the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra. And the name Geo Resort Symphony is a nod to harmony of sky, sea, forest, wind, and time.)

My cabin was down from the closed hotel building via a slippery path. I could access Cafe La Mer by going further, batting the overgrowth away, or I could go back up and around via the driveways, as Mr. Matsuyama had brought me. Certainly, in the dark and the rain, I would take the latter.

"Dinner is at seven o'clock," he said. "There will be a few other people there. Thank you" He had asked if I minded dining with others; I was happy to have company.

In our exchanges I had asked about doing laundry. "Is it possible to wash some clothes?" I asked.

"Now?" he said. "Can we do it tomorrow morning? The chef is busy." I wasn't sure what that had to do with it, and it was only three in the afternoon.

But his agenda was more important than mine. "That's fine. See you at seven."

The main room of the cabin had an overhead heater, a space heater capable of warming half a human body directly in front, and a heated blanket over the central tatami mats. I couldn't get warm. Off to the side was a small bedroom, impossibly cold, with two twin beds. One was bare; the other was stacked with blankets, sheets, and pillows. I brought a heavy blanket out to the tatami mats in the main room and, after using the bathroom, where I was greeted by a black spider robust enough to be fried up for a family of four, took my wet clothes off and rolled up for a nap, the space heater whirring in my ears and my feet still cold.

The people at dinner were five students of biology, geology, ecology, and paleontology. They were visiting from Ibaraki to collect fossils, examine plants, and study rocks and minerals. One was especially interested in a kind of long fungus to which cicadas, formerly in symbiosis with it, are now a parasite.

He claimed he had heard of Toru Tomita. I brought up a picture of his book, and another student rushed to get a photo of it. "I want to read it!"

"There's only one left," I said.

I soon realized why the chef, who was Mr. Matsuyama's wife, didn't have time to show me how to use the laundry machine. The dinner she had been preparing was a three-hour affair. It even had a printed menu. The first course, "Breath of Spring," included turnips, clam chawanmushi, pickled mustard greens, and sliced sea cucumber.

"Do you like sea cucumber?" one of the students asked me.

"Yes," I said, stretching the truth a bit. I wouldn't go out of my way to order it, but I appreciate it once in a while, if only to remind myself that I'm not missing much. It doesn't taste like much by itself; rather, it picks up the flavor of what it's cooked in, and it can be a tough crunch to tackle, like pigs' ears. It has to be thinly sliced, and here it was.

"I work in a biology lab," he said. "I once had to dissect a sea cucumber. And when I finished, I ate it."

The "Sea and Mountains" carpaccio came next, with prosciutto, squid rings, watercress, and slivers of kumquats (kinkan), which grow alongside bitter oranges (daidai) in the village. These were presented on a long, narrow board almost reaching the length of the table, and we served ourselves with tongs.

Mr. Matsuyama brought out a covered bowl, and we beheld the next course, a jacopever soup with barnacles. The jacopever is a kind of rockfish, "tsuzuri" in the local dialect and "soi" in broader Japanese.

"A bottom-dweller," the biology specialist said. "Like a lamprey. I had to dissect a lamprey, too."

"Did you eat it afterward?"

"Not then. My boss doesn't like them. But this guy” — he gestured two people over — "is a fabulous chef. I took all the lampreys and he cooked them in red wine."

"You had a lamprey party?"

They laughed. They seemed to be closer friends than the others. They had gone fishing from the shore yesterday, even in the rain and the wind, and the chef friend had lost a fish to an octopus.

Other magnificent flavors came out: tempura of butterbur scape, a green that flourishes at this time of year, and edamame with cinnamon and star anise. I looked at the menu and we were only halfway down the paper. Zeppoline came out to mop up the soup broth, and then we were each given a hamburger patty, a blend of Hokkaido and Oki beef. Then a bowl of spaghetti with anchovy-egg shavings. Dessert was a strawberry pannacotta.

"We're here studying because of a government fund," the biology specialist said. "I'm grateful that the government is getting us this meal. Usually it's..."

"Cup Noodles?" I said. "I've been to the Cup Noodles Museum, near Osaka."

"In Ikeda," the student chef said. "I live near that museum!"

Well, I think they all deserve a special meal once in a while, even if it's from a government fund.

Throughout the meal, Mr. Matsuyama had plied me with wine pairings: Gewürztraminer, riesling, something red when we got to the pasta. My confidence boosted, I followed the students up the bushy trail, until they went down and I continued up to my cabin. I didn't even make it to the bed; I fell asleep on the tatami mats for two hours. Then I hoisted the space heater into the cold bedroom, casually spreaded the sheets onto the bed without tucking them in, went back for the blanket, and was out for the night.

This morning, after a breakfast of vegetable soup followed by sausage and an egg artfully served with salad on a large, black dish, Kinuko the chef showed me how to use the combination washer-dryer. I pushed the button to start the cycle. It calculated what I had submitted and displayed the time: three hours and 40 minutes. Well, the wind was howling, Porest was closed, and I didn't feel like walking through the tunnels again anyway. I didn't mind going back to my room for the morning in my jacket and bathing suit.

I came back when the cycle should have been over, but the machine didn't want to give up my clothes for another 65 minutes. I had the tin of fish and various remainders for lunch: one of the three protein bars left from Niue, fudge from Akaroa. I went back down to the machine.

It still said 65 minutes.

Well, that's enough of that, I thought, hitting the button to stop it. Everything was clean and dry.

I showered, dressed, and went down to the shore. Here, even more than at Kuroshima, I could see the columnar joints of basaltic lava in their astoundingly regular, nearly hexagonal patterns. This is the Oki Islands' youngest rock, a mere 400,000 years old, according to the information board. When the lava cooled, it contracted, creating the vertical cracks that separated it into columns. Due to rising and failing sea levels, along with wave erosion, some of the columns were eaten away, leaving flat, stumpy areas in front of the remaining columns.

It's becoming clearer why Dogojima is such a magnet for geologists.

Go on to Dogojima day 3